


Collateral damage is all I am

by Painless_papercuts



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Feels, Internal Monologue, John is sad but not that sad, M/M, Monologue, POV John Watson, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-23
Updated: 2013-08-23
Packaged: 2017-12-24 10:58:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/939176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Painless_papercuts/pseuds/Painless_papercuts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock returns after three years, but the world has kept on turning at 221B.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Collateral damage is all I am

**Author's Note:**

> I was feeling sorry for myself, and realised that soon Post-Reichenbach is going to be canon. So I bashed this out.
> 
> I think I use too many commas...

I walk down the stairs to face another day, and it was all ok. Nothing was going to happen today.

 

You’re in my kitchen. Our kitchen. I feel like this sight, you standing in your great coat in the middle of the kitchen, should be familiar; I smile ruefully as a flash of nostalgia echoes through me, but I don't regret leaving it behind. The world keeps on turning, Sherlock, I had to move on. I realised that you _couldn't_ have died not long after you fell, although I never worked out how you did it. I assumed that it would only be a matter of time before you came back at 221B ready to start afresh. Everyday I came downstairs with a fluttering heart, wondering if you'd be where you're stood right now. It was hope that I felt for a while, but with every day that you didn't return, I lived another day without you, with Mary, without Mary, and hope was slowly replaced by mere acceptance that this day would eventually arrive.

I should be happy to see you here, very alive. You’re explaining how you survived and I’m barely hearing the words you’re saying. I'm sure it's a very clever and all that, but it surprises me when I realise that my mind is wandering. I stare at your face as you explain the past three years with an impatient huff and the glare. You’re thinner than you were before you, well, _died_. Your cheeks are more hollow than before, your lips are thinner. I can’t help but notice that the verve, that glint in your eye that comes when you explain your best cases, has faded. Well here you are Sherlock, explaining your greatest case yet, and I can see the embers are no longer glowing.

Now you're back, there's no longer a space for you in my life. Mary went some way to filling the void you left, as she squeezed in next to the ugly scar tissue that was healing over my heart and called it home and life was great for a while. But when she died it healed over completely, forming a thick, tough barrier. You caused this Sherlock, don't think you can break me open just to start this all over again. Moriarty said he’d burn the heart out of you but no one expected there to be collateral damage. And collateral damage is all I am now.

  
I've moved on. I'm out of your orbit now, Sherlock, and I don't think I'm going to be coming back.

  
So I suppose this is it.

  
You were my best friend, my only friend, and you fixed me when I was at my most broken and it was great. Really. My best years were spent chasing after you down back alleys and across roofs, silhouettes on the London skyline, higher than the Shard, greater than St Paul’s. You were the desert sand and the pavements beneath my feet and the grit between my teeth and the air in my lungs and I will always be grateful for what you did and what we had. Even though it’s turned out this way.

But then you left, you fell, and my world crumbled around me. I was buried by the debris and rubble of our life together as it came crashing down on top of me. I was suffocating from the loss of you. Brick by painful brick, I built my life, my fortress, back up again. I built my walls thick so nothing could hurt me as much as your death did, ever again. Only, in building those walls so thick, so high, I left you on the outside. You're standing outside the portcullis, asking me to lower it and let you in. 

  
But you can't, Sherlock. You can't come in. I won't, _can't_ , let you in. Not again.

 

I sit here as you dissect the life I’ve created for myself. And for once Sherlock can you please not do this? I managed to make my own existence tangible, concrete, again; this is not what I need right now, to be broken down for your own enjoyment. Your eyebrows raise slightly and I realise how unrecognisable this John Watson is from his previous guises. John Hamish Watson: doctor; soldier; colleague; friend... nobody. The world we had together has gone, Sherlock.

  
I'm moving to Leeds to start my new job, my new life, next week. We can meet up one last time if that agrees with you, before I go. After that, I probably won't see you again and please don’t follow me up there. Your track record for staying alive was flawless before you knew me, and it’s time for you to move on. 221B didn’t stand and wait for your return, things have happened. Mrs Hudson? I’m surprised you can’t deduce it - her grief and her hip got the better of her, and she moved out to a retirement home nine months ago. 221A is being renovated to appeal to the student market. Yes, Sherlock, I tried to stop it but look at me. Who am I, really? Single, ex-army, ex-blogger, a widower. I’m nothing to no one now. You're shouting at me, cutting remarks about how ordinary I've become, how  _boring_ I am, float down around me as dust motes. I think my pursuit of adrenalin rushes ended when you painted the pavement with liar's blood and watched me suffer from a ' _s_ _afe'_ distance. My taste for cheating death has turned rather sour.

 

I’m sorry it’s ended this way.

  
Nothing ever happened to me, I thought. Yet everything has happened. I am not the same man that walked into St Bart's and handed you his mobile phone, and I'm not the same man that watched his friend plunge to his death. I have been changed irreversibly, for both the better and for good. And I can truthfully say that it was all because of you. All because I knew you.

  
Goodbye, Sherlock. Take care, my friend.

**Author's Note:**

> It would be ridiculous to think that I own anything to do with BBC Sherlock or ACD Sherlock Holmes. So don't think that.
> 
> I may have put a bit too much of myself in John, so let me know if he's OOC.


End file.
